TS ISO 832

TS ISO 832 is an information and documentation standard concerned with how terms used in bibliographic descriptions and references are abbreviated. It focuses on words and common word combinations in languages written with the Latin, Cyrillic and Greek alphabets, helping bibliographic practice remain consistent across catalogues, citations and reference lists.

Why bibliographic abbreviations matter

In bibliographic work, abbreviations are used to shorten repeated descriptive expressions while keeping their meaning recognizable. This is especially useful for elements such as publication type, series data, volume and issue information, and other recurring reference terms. In general technical terms, a stable abbreviation system reduces variation, supports machine-readable and human-readable records, and helps users interpret records in a consistent way.

Scope across scripts and reference practice

The standard’s scope is limited to rules for abbreviating frequently occurring words and word combinations in bibliographic descriptions and references for languages using the Latin, Cyrillic and Greek alphabets. That makes it relevant to libraries, databases, indexes and scholarly reference systems where multilingual or cross-script bibliographic data must be presented in a controlled form. The broader technical role of such rules is to balance linguistic tradition with uniform record presentation.

This standard addresses the formatting of bibliographic terminology rather than the intellectual content of the sources themselves. Its purpose is to provide a common framework for abbreviated forms so that references can be prepared and read with greater consistency.